It turned out that Number Two came home - very late, but he came home nonetheless, and I was so grateful he did. Some time during my drive home from work, which was two hours long, my cold turned into a horrible, horrible flu. By the time I picked up Number One from her childcarer, I was ready to crawl into bed, but still had bath, dinner and bottle to contend with. And apparently she was a horror for the childcarer all day with her own dreadful cold, so that didn't make me feel any better.
At last she was off to bed, followed quickly by me. By the time Number Two got home I had just about managed to warm up, which was followed quickly by pyjama-and-sheet drenching sweats. So much so that I ended up sleeping half the night on a beach towel to stop myself from getting a chill from the soaking bottom sheet.
By morning I couldn't move. Thank god for the threat of a centimetre of snow in London, which everyone knows causes the city to grind to a halt, and the transport system to fail. This was the reason Number Two decided to come home, rather than spending the night up there (not the fact that his wife and daughter were very sick - I think he was hoping for a good nights sleep). So Number Two got Number One sorted and bundled off to the childcarer, while I slept. Which would have been absolute bliss if I wasn't feeling so rotten.
So I called in sick to work. I've worked for the same employer for seven years now, and I think I've probably had two sick days in that time. I hate taking sick days, and in fact rarely get ill, and I get extremely frustrated by people who seem to see it as their right to take their "quota" of 10 sick days a year. One of my best work buddies and I spend quite a bit of time discussing the work ethics of the young (even though we're not that old ourselves). We have a theory that the younger you are, the less work ethics you seem to be instilled with. There isn't the same commitment to your employer in younger people that there is in the older generation. Young people seem to think that their employer owes them something more than just a salary, and they find ways to claim it back - wasting time surfing the web, chatting to their mates over e-mail or MSN, taking sick days. I've never seen a contract that states that your benefits include £xxxxx salary, 10 hours per week leisure time within working hours, unlimited sick days. We've also noticed that in our team, the most sick days seem to be taken by people who work outside the London office.
And so for this reason, even though I was in a reasonable amount of discomfort (actually quite a lot for a cold), I still contemplated getting up and going to work just so I didn't have to call in sick. I think the fact that I couldn't stand up straight for some reason when I got out of bed kind of put the kibosh on that. I've not even been back for a month and already I'm taking days off. And I'm no longer part of the London team. Hope this isn't a new trend.
